


Phil Coulson Really Needs to Go Microwave Shopping

by anakinno



Series: Enjoying AoS Season 7 with as Much Angst as Possible [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, 7x10, Bisexual Skye | Daisy Johnson, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Food, Getting Together, Humor, Lemons, Not Canon Compliant, Short & Sweet, Team Bonding, Team as Family, ignores the events of 7x10 somewhat, pre-7x10, yes the deke kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25613935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anakinno/pseuds/anakinno
Summary: Daniel Sousa continues to be unfazed by the twenty-first century. Daisy takes it as a personal challenge.Five times Sousa adamantly refuses to provide Daisy with a reaction, and the one time she surprises him.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Series: Enjoying AoS Season 7 with as Much Angst as Possible [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773439
Comments: 35
Kudos: 157





	Phil Coulson Really Needs to Go Microwave Shopping

**Author's Note:**

> In which I attempt to write fluff/comic relief for the pain that AoS s7 is currently putting us through. Sorry not sorry for the completely contradictory series title.
> 
> Ignores the events of 7x10, or, if you'd rather, pretends that the team had more time to kill before they went into Afterlife to help Jiaying. I also decided to move this ahead to 1989, for reasons to come.

i.

“This is called a cell phone,” Daisy says, and she absently wonders how she even roped herself into this.

Sousa looks at Daisy, eyes steady on her face, with absolutely no surprise in his expression. “A cell phone,” he repeats as she passes him the small device—one of the iPhones that Deke had smuggled onto the Zephyr, way back when. He inspects it with a frown.

“You have to push the button,” Daisy says, trying not to laugh, and she watches as the screen illuminates, displaying the time: 2:24 AM.

Okay, so maybe the team had only settled in the Lighthouse about two hours ago once the Zephyr’s countdown timer stopped. Maybe Daisy should be sleeping instead of teaching Sousa about the twenty-first century.

But who can blame her? Introducing these devices to Sousa is the most fun she’s had in weeks, maybe _months_. It’s even more hilarious that he doesn't seem to be fazed by anything. He takes every new development in stride, ever since his first look at the inside of the _Zephyr_ during the 1950s.

Unfortunately, Daisy is a competitive being, and all she’s been able to think about since is getting Sousa to _react_ somehow. 

“Press that button,” Daisy says, jerking herself out of her thoughts. She reaches over to press the home button, her fingers brushing against Sousa’s briefly. The sensor reads her fingerprint easily and opens to show the iPhone’s home screen. “There you go.”

Sousa— _Daniel_ , she reminds herself—peers at the screen. It’s actually kind of endearing. “It’s… a television,” he says, sounding suspicious. “In a box.”

“Kind of, yeah.” Daisy adjusts her position on the monitor where she’s sitting with a foot braced against the desk. “Here—you see the icon that looks like a camera?”

A beat passes while Sousa scans the screen, eyes narrowed. “Here?” he asks, turning the screen to show her. 

She nods. “Tap it.”

He opens the app and raises his eyebrows as it loads, displaying a perfect reflection of his face in the screen. “Woah,” he says. “A person in a box. Pretty handy, huh?”

“Wait—“ She takes the phone from his hand. He relinquishes it and scoots closer to her, grinning at her as she holds it out in front of them and presses the shutter. The flash blinds her momentarily when it comes, but she brings up the photo and passes the device back to Sousa with a smug air. “See? It’s a camera.”

The photo, in itself, is an awful thing—Daisy looks exhausted, with bags under her eyes, and Sousa isn’t even looking at the camera. He’s staring at her, enraptured, as if she’s more interesting than the cell phone. 

Daisy feels her cheeks warm and she quickly saves the photo for later, pressing the home button before launching back into an explanation of the various apps on the phone. Sousa doesn’t move away; she can feel his breath on her shoulder.

Evidently, she’s going to have to get creative.

* * *

ii.

Unfortunately for Daisy, it seems like Daniel Sousa is one of those people who can guess every plot twist in a movie before it comes.

Struggling with a lack of ideas, she decides to show him _Star Wars,_ fully expecting him to be surprised by the inevitable “I am your father!” moment. Sousa is evidently confused by the request—there’s not a lot of time for recreation these days, after all, but she’s sure the team won’t begrudge her this—and he concedes when she promises to make him popcorn.

"Popcorn?" he asks, frowning. "How are you going to make _popcorn_ without a machine?"

Daisy has the sudden realization that one, Sousa has no idea what a _microwave is,_ and two, he sure as hell doesn't know what microwavable popcorn is. "You're gonna love this," she tells him, her smile stretching wide across her face. He grins back unsteadily, unsure, and she leads him into the mess hall.

The only problem is that the base doesn’t _have_ a microwave. She really didn't think this far through—Phil Coulson really needs to go microwave shopping at some point. Preferably back home in 2019. 

So Daisy uses her powers to pop the corn instead, vibrating the bag—which she'd found in Deke's secret snack stash—at just the right speed to heat it up and send the smell of popcorn wafting through the Lighthouse. Sousa is impressed by the show of skill, she can tell; he lounges against one of the nearby cabinets and watches her as she works.

The smell is addicting. Soon enough, Jemma (and Deke, following at her heels like an adoring puppy) comes to investigate the smell, so Daisy ends up making several extra bags of popcorn for the rest of the team.

(“You’re like a Inhuman microwave,” Deke says when Daisy hands him a freshly made bag. “Wait—microquake. Micro- _Quake_ , get it?!”)

Mack makes an appearance too, sticking his head around the door to see what the commotion is. "You making popcorn?" he asks.

Daisy resists the urge to remind him that he's pointing out the obvious as she levitates the bag in the air. She shoots him a glare, demands, "You want any or not?"

Once Daisy is finished, she brings her fresh crop of popcorn into the Lighthouse's briefing room, where Jemma has rigged up a projector, a VHS tape that they'd found stuffed into the back of a nearby storage closet, and and a bedsheet. After providing almost the _entire fucking team_ with the damn snack, she presses the _play_ button and lets _Star Wars_ roll.

Sousa sits through _A New Hope_ and _Empire Strikes Back_ on the edge of his seat, fully caught up in the story. Before they make it to the end of _Empire,_ however, he leans in close to Daisy and says, “I might be wrong—you have full license to yell me at if I am—but is Darth Vader Luke’s father?”

Daisy resists the urge to scream.

* * *

iii.

So it seems like technology and media are two things that Sousa continues to be unsurprised by. _Good to know._ Unsure how to proceed, Daisy goes to Jemma—who is lost in thought about Fitz, probably, as well as the time drive, which makes Daisy feel bad about approaching her—and tries to ask for advice. Their conversation goes a little like this:

Daisy: “You know Deke well, right? Is there anything that surprised him when he came to the twenty-first century?"

Jemma (distractedly): “Well, everything, really.”

Daisy: “Anything specific?”

Jemma, after a beat: “Music. Trees. Lemons.”

And Daisy tries not to laugh at that, because _lemons_. Of course the existence of lemons in abundance surprised Deke, who comes from a dystopian future where the Earth was uninhabitable and citrus fruits were almost extinct. She doubts they will have the same affect on Sousa, though.

But it gets her thinking along similar lines. _What types of food would surprise Sousa?_

Inspiration hits suddenly, and she sprints out of the lab with a harried “Thank you!” thrown over her shoulder in Simmons’ direction. Daisy hurries in the direction of the mess hall, her fingers crossed. _Please, let there be some snacks left._ Once she reaches the pantry, she digs in immediately, throwing aside cans of beans (what the heck?!) and other shelf-stable foods to find _—yes!_

Daisy pulls out her prize: two slightly-squished bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos, straight from 2019. _Thank God for Deke._ With the snacks in her hands, she goes to find Sousa.

He’s standing in the middle of the hallway several levels down, frowning down at the iPhone Daisy had provided him with. When he hears her footsteps coming down the hall in his direction, his head snaps up and he grins, surprised but still delighted to see her. The expression on his face warms Daisy's insides. "Daisy! What's happened? Has the countdown started again?"

"What—no," she says, taken aback. She holds out one of the bags for him to take, and at a loss for anything better to say, she adds, "Future snack. I—just try it."

Sousa takes the bag, eyes scanning the packaging with reticence. "'Flamin' Hot Cheetos,'" he reads aloud, and blinks. "Do I even want to know?"

"Try it," Daisy says again. She grabs the bag from him, opens it, and passes it back. He coughs when he gets a mouthful of Cheeto dust and turns to Daisy, eyes wide. 

"What in the _hell—"_

"Eat. The. Damn. Cheetos," she says, and he pulls a handful out of the bag skepticly.

"If I die—"

"I'll come to your funeral, make Deke wear a black dress, resurrect you as an LMD," she says instantly. "Whatever. Try it. Have I ever done you wrong before?"

"No," Sousa says, almost to himself, his voice so quiet that Daisy can barely hear it. "No, you haven't." He straightens, looks her in the eyes, and then—in one swift movement—puts the entire handful of Cheetos into his mouth at once.

Daisy starts forward in horror, but Sousa is already chewing, eyes wide at the amount of flavor. When he swallows, he breathes in deep and says, "Damn. What did you put in those things?"

Daisy laughs aloud, relieved that Daniel is okay but also internally seething. _What will it take to get this guy to stop smiling?_ she wonders as Sousa chews another handful, looking intrigued by the taste and not-at-all put off by the hotness.

All avenues exhausted, she decides to turn to her last resort: _Deke Shaw._

* * *

iv.

“So, Deke,” Daisy starts, and then profoundly regrets ever coming here at all.

It’s not like she and Deke aren’t friends. After she’d finally rejected him the other day and explained how she felt about Sousa, he’d been weirdly understanding. _Huh,_ she'd thought. _Maybe_ _he really did change when he spent all those months in the eighties._

But that doesn’t mean this is a horrible, terrible, _awful_ fucking plan that she never should have put into motion.

"What can I do for you?" Deke asks, tapping his fingers on the console. He's always a bundle of nervous energy: tapping his foot, playing an unseen rhythm on his knee, pacing the hallways of first the _Zephyr_ and then the Lighthouse. Right now, he's focused on something on his computer screen—something to do with his band? His headphones are wrapped around his neck, still plugged in.

"I, uh, need to know—where did you get those lemons?"

Deke blinks, caught off guard. He reaches forward and slides the laptop shut, his gaze never leaving hers, and for a second she panics. _Did I say the wrong thing._ "I shall teach you the secrets of the lemons, my very young Padawan," he says after a beat in a falsely wise tone, dropping his voice down an octave.

Daisy throws her head back and _laughs,_ grateful and relieved all at once, and Deke joins in after a moment.

It turns out that Deke had bought his lemons from various farmers' markets in the year 2019. Seeing as they're stuck on Lake Ontario, with no farmers' markets in sight, Daisy elects to take the quinjet, along with Deke, to find a supermarket with a big enough lemon supply. When they walk through the doors, a blast of cool air and the smell of food hits them like a punch to the gut (or in Deke's case, the stomach).

"We are here," she tells him sternly, "for _lemons."_

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Deke tells her, and then he heads off in the direction of the baking aisle. She does _not_ want to know what that means.

She locates the lemons pretty easily—this grocery store in upstate New York has a large range of produce, from onions to bananas to carrots to vegetables that Daisy can't even pronounce. She stands in front of the lemons, eyes roving over the prices (thirty cents a lemon) and doing mental math.

"Found 'em yet?"

Daisy almost jumps out of her skin when Deke speaks, standing behind her for God knows how long once he'd come back from his baking expedition. "Asshole," she grumbles as she gathers as many lemons as she can into a bag.

Deke peers into the bag. "These aren't even _organic,_ " he complains.

Daisy wonders if Coulson would be disappointed in her if she dislocated Deke's jaw. Probably _._ "Twenty-nineteen made you soft," she tells him as they head up to the checkout—Daisy forks out the ten bucks as the cashier looks at the pile of lemons suspiciously.

"Wait a minute," Deke says, and he procures his boxed funfetti cake mix from out of nowhere before setting it down for the woman to scan.

"You're buying _cake mix?"_ Daisy exclaims. It's ridiculous. "In the middle of a Chronicom invasion?"

"Sue me," Deke shoots back, before turning to the cashier with a sickly sweet smile. She looks unimpressed and rings up their new total with no further conversation.

They return to the Lighthouse after a few hours, and Deke helps Daisy spread the lemons—thirty three of them in total—over Sousa's bunk. When she's finished, they high-five and go their separate ways. Daisy returns to the sitting room to wait.

Sousa bursts into the team's common room later, face flushed. "Someone put _lemons_ all over my bunk!" he exclaims, with exactly the same sort of vehemence that Daisy had used once upon a time. "What kind of a sick joke is this?"

Mack takes one look at Daisy's face and sighs. "I'm getting too old for this shit," he grumbles, leaning back in his chair. "Ask Deke."

So that's a no to the lemons, then. Good to know.

* * *

v.

"Monster Energy?" Sousa sounds horrified but enthralled. "What kind of a name is _that?"_

Daisy passes over the can she'd found in the pantry and watches as Sousa stares at it. It's not their first twenty-first century food since the Cheetos, but she thinks this might be the one to break Sousa's calm demeanor. "It's a drink," she says vaguely.

"A drink." He stares at it. "Is it going to turn me into a super soldier or something?"

"No!" Daisy says, laughing with it. "No, no, it's not. It's an energy drink. You open it like this—here." She reaches over, takes the can, and opens it with a _pop._ Her fingers brush Sousa's and she feels electricity travel through her body from the point of contact. Cheeks flushed, she passes the can of Monster back to Sousa.

He takes a sip, winces, then swallows. "Ah. I did not expect it to taste like machine oil."

"I used to live on these," Daisy tells him as she fiddles with her fingernails, bitten raw. She doesn't meet his eyes.

There's a beat of silence, before—

"Not too bad," he says after taking another swig, approval in his voice. He's grinning at her when she lifts her head, eyes shining, which makes something in her chest pop. "Better than the Cheetos, at least."

So, no reaction on his part other than a positive one. She can work with that.

* * *

+1.

After her many failed attempts at ruffling Sousa's feathers, Daisy decides enough is enough. If she wants to get his attention, she's going to have to do something _big._ Bigger than cell phones, bigger than Cheetos, bigger than lemons.

Deke and Jemma are now fully invested, as well as Mack, who had been unceremoniously roped into the entire scheme when he came to chew Deke and Daisy out about the lemons left on Sousa's bunk.

("I see lemons in my nightmares," he complains to Daisy. "Robot lemons. Alien lemons. Lemons with legs. Every night."

Deke smirks. "Does that mean you're having lemon-themed sex dreams—"

"Don't you dare finish that thought," Mack threatens, cutting him off.)

As it happens, all of them are fresh out of ideas by now, including Daisy. She groans and leans back in her chair—they're sitting in the team's common room again, just the four of them. Deke is trying to come up with more ideas that seem to be equally awful.

"You could always just kiss some sense into him," Jemma supplies, shooting Deke one of her trademarked glares. It's meant to be an offhanded, throwaway comment, but it gets Daisy thinking: _what if._

So here she is—standing outside of Sousa's room, bouncing on the balls of her feet in a strange anticipation, the memory of Sousa's lips on hers during the time loop still fresh in her mind. _If this works..._ well. No time like the present, right?

Daisy takes a deep breath, steels herself for the inevitable rejection, and knocks sharply on the door. Twice.

It slides open after a moment to reveal a sleep-mussed Daniel Sousa, still wearing his pyjamas. His face brightens when he sees Daisy standing there. "Hey, Daisy! What time is it? I—"

She takes two steps forward, one after the other, and then she leans in and kisses him. Sousa makes a surprised sound, exactly like he had during the time loop, but he pulls her flush against him. Kissing Sousa is different than kissing any of the other guys—and a few girls—that she's been with before. He is purposeful, directing all his focus onto her as he kisses her with an intensity that surprises Daisy.

It's _so_ much better than the last time—threatened with imminent death and the possibility of never getting to tell Sousa how she feels. When Daisy pulls away reluctantly, Sousa's at a loss for words. He stares at her and touches a finger to his lips in shock.

"T-That—how did you...?" He trails off, facial expression still completely shut down, and looks at her with such adoration in his eyes that it almost makes her heart melt. "Daisy—?"

_Score,_ Daisy thinks victoriously, grinning, and she leans in to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Things I learned while writing:
> 
> Microwaves were not in widespread home use until at least the late 1970s.  
> Hot Cheetos were not invented until 1991.  
>  _Star Wars_ ' first movie was released in 1977.  
> Monster Energy was released in 2002.  
> Funfetti cake mix was first seen in 1989.
> 
> Fun fact: I ate four funfetti cupcakes while writing :D
> 
> I am incapable of writing anything Agents of SHIELD without including one Deke Shaw. Come and yell with me on [Tumblr](https://anakinnope.tumblr.com/) please.


End file.
